Of Logic and Doubts
by Assimbya
Summary: [Movieverse] When returning to New York, Katrina and Ichabod find that not all their problems were solved in Sleepy Hollow, and the remaining ones may be quite a bit more difficult to handle


_Katrina_

When they got to New York, she wasn't impressed. From what Ichabod had told her, Katrina had believed that New York was the center of the universe, and the complete opposite of Sleepy Hollow. It was impossibly to deny that New York was different from the town where she had spent all the previous years of her life, but, in the important ways, it was still the same. People were still sullen and distrustful as she passed them in the streets, and the world still seemed to be painted with a palette of black, white and gray. There was a cardinal that perched upon the leafless tree outside her window and chirped to announce the morning, but it was the only speck of color in the entire city, at least of what she could see.

Sighing, she leaned out over the windowsill and gazed at it. It seemed remarkable that such a little, fragile bird could survive amid the cold of January. But it was always the most fragile one that survived, wasn't it? Ichabod, the bookish man who seemed to know as little about the real world as she knew about his scientific principles, had outlived and outstayed the tribulations to win her hand, while Brom and the other constables (only a couple, but a couple only seemed like a small amount when you lived in Sleepy Hollow) who had been sent there before Ichabod, had all died. And she had watched them all fall halfway in love with her, as though she was a Princess in a fairy tale, who set trials for her many suitors. The suitor who won the Princess in those stories was always the least expected one, the street rat, the woodcutter's son, wasn't he? But did such a suitor ever faint at danger? It was true that the very fact of Ichabod's survival was remarkable. And she would be more mindful of that from now on. The Princess could protect the woodcutter's son, couldn't she?

"Come here, Ichabod. Look at this bird. Isn't it beautiful?"

_Ichabod_

Katrina was dressed like her stepmother. Ichabod tried to ignore that fact as he helped her out of the carriage, gallantly telling her and Masbath amusing details about the city, but it was difficult to avoid looking at the garish black and white pattern, so like the one Lady Van Tassel had been wearing on that all too recent night He told himself that Katrina was harmless, that he had been mistaken that other time when he had believed her to be doing evil, but that irrational feeling, impervious to all logic and reason, remained. _Magic could be evil, _it said, _it must be destroyed. It follows no rules and is therefore dangerous. _The memory of his mother, blood streaming from her limp body. His father's condemnation of the things she did, his warnings for months and months before he dragged her off by the hair. _That was what happened those who used magic. It would happen to Katrina eventually._

He put the thoughts from his head and smiled at Katrina, who didn't notice his smile, as she was leaning over the windowsill, peering at something outside. Her posture pressed the panels of black and white satin against her slim body, and, oh, yes, she was beautiful. His wife. Or she would be in a few days. But, no, no, Lady Von Tassel had been beautiful too. And he had been enough of a weak man to notice that, which had seemed only to be enhanced by her evil as she stood before him laughing cruelly. On that night, he could have kissed her as passionately as the Hessian had, were it not for his morals and rational thought. Beauty was no guarantee of innocence, he had to remember that. In fact, it could be a dangerous temptation unto itself.

But then Katrina called him over to look at a cardinal on a branch outside. There was an open, guileless smile on her face and he knew that _her _beauty posed no threat. She could still cherish little, beautiful things like red birds, like the little optic toy his mother had given him. He was still safe.

_Katrina_

She adjusted well to the life of Lady Katrina Crane. She liked surprising Ichabod with little things, like placing a sprig of his favorite flowers on his plate at breakfast, and the shy smile that illuminated his face at such moments was always worth the effort it took to find the flowers in the midst of the stone of the city. She began living for those smiles, and she preserved the memory of each one in her mind, like pressing flower between the pages of a book.

But the smiles became rarer and rarer, and it took more and more to coax them out of him. There was a furrow constantly in his brow, and whenever he spoke to her, his fingers fiddled with something nervously, his hands betraying thoughts that his voice – which always shook like that, and was no indication of anything – did not. He came home and was tired each night, hardly looking at her before going to the bedroom to rest (for he barely ate anything, as well. He drank tea – to make his throat ache less, he said – but that was nearly all). She ate her dinner alone and remembered what it had been like for the first few weeks in New York, his shy, hesitant kisses and his clever hands on her body. Or even reminiscing over the fearful final days in Sleep Hollow, for then he had been so clearly in love with her, and the cause of his troubles was external, and obvious. She wished for such a clear cause in this situation. But whenever she asked him what was wrong, looking at him with her wide, innocent brown eyes that she had thought that he could not resist, he said, "It's just trouble at work." He never told her just what sort of trouble it was.

She did find out for herself, eventually, when the Burgomaster invited them both to a dinner party (it was the polite thing to do, because Ichabod had gotten a promotion after returning from Sleepy Hollow and was far more important now. It wasn't as thought the Burgomaster _liked _them at all – quite to the contrary). Masbath didn't go, partly because he had to work late that night with the wheelwright to whom he was apprenticed and partly because his presence would have led to awkward questions that neither Katrina nor Ichabod wished to answer. The rest of the world did not need to know about what all three of them had gone through together in Sleepy Hollow. So Ichabod and Katrina arrived together at the front door of the Burgomaster's house at six forty-five one night. Katrina wore a dress of pale violet silk, far finer than the sort she wore generally, with lace on the bodice and pearls around the neck. Ichabod was dressed as he always was, all in formal black save for a white undershirt.

She didn't remember much of anything that happened that night, except for the Burgomaster himself.

There was something about his eyes that was disturbing, as they seemed to bore straight into her, discovering all her secrets. When he thought that no one was looking, he muttered words under his breath, often with his eyes fixed upon Ichabod.

Never let it be said that Katrina Von Tassel didn't recognized malevolent magic when she saw it, not after everything she had gone through and all the mistakes she had made. She had learned her lesson from them. And that lesson was to never let anyone she cared about be harmed ever again.

When they got home, she mentioned the matter to Ichabod, saying, as she brushed out her pale hair, "Have you noticed anything…odd about the Burgomaster?"

Ichabod didn't lift his eyes from the book he was reading as he replied. His voice was oddly flat and monotonous, in a way it had never been before, even in the lonely last few months. "Of course not. He is a good man. It was kind of him to invite us to his dinner party."

Katrina knew then that she would get no help from him. She had to do this on her own.

The next day she went through all her books of white magic, searching the fragile, cream colored pages (some still filled with the lavender scent her mother used to wear and make sachets of, for she had inherited her books of magic from her mother, as she had inherited the magic itself, which came from her blood, always from her blood) for ways to break curses. But the books told her nothing, only ways to prevent curses that had already been cast, any Ichabod got more worried and more distracted, and less like himself. He seemed to get frailer, and not in the way he always had been, the way that was so distinctly _him_ and that charmed her so. No, he became weak and frail and listless, no longer interested in the world around him, content to sit inside as close to the fire as he could get and think about things that he already understood.

And, even aside from all that, he was getting sick, in a way that fit no normal sickness. He was overcome suddenly by coughing fits or chills, which would somehow manage to completely incapacitate him for hours at a time. She would take care of him, and she had Masbath's help whenever he wasn't busy with his apprenticeship, but she knew somehow, in her very bones, that Ichabod was dying.

And so she picked up the last book of magic she had remaining.

It was hidden in the bottom drawer of her dresser, beneath dresses of faded blue silk. Covered in black leather it alone, of all her books, had no markings on the cover.

She had, of course, taken it from among her stepmother's things before the left. She had no idea what had possessed her to slip it in among her clothes, except that she had the vague feeling that it might come in handy. She had not yet dared to open it.

Even then, when she had resolved to do so, she opened it only slowly, noticing the way her fingers felt against the smooth leather before she pulled the cover open.

On the inside cover, _Lady Von Tassel _was written there, in elaborate, curling letters. Katrina's palms grew hot with anger that her mother's murderer would dare sign her name as that of the woman she killed, but she calmed herself. Just as she turned to the next page, however, a sort of swirling mist seemed to rise from it, and an all too familiar voice whispered in her ear:

_Darling stepdaughter, what _are _you doing? Ah, I see that the temptation to not stay pure and innocent and virginal was too strong. That act got boring after a while, did it? Far more fun to go all the way, to take the evil of the magic with the good, to use your beauty for seduction to appease pure lust rather than a soulful longing. Don't worry, there's nothing wrong with trying black magic. It's what you were always _meant _to do, little witch, wasn't it? Be like me, not like you and Ichabod's virtuous mothers. _I _survived, didn't I? Even down here, underground, with the taste of my own blood in my mouth, I _survived. _You're a survivor too. That's why you're doing this._

The words chilled her, but Katrina forced the voice that said them from her mind, leaving only an echo behind. The truth was that she knew very well that the voice had not been her stepmother's. It was her own.

The harm had been done, for the thoughts had infiltrated her mind, but she pretended that they hadn't and turned her attention to finding the spell that she was looking for.

It was remarkably easy to find – a spell that would stop any individual from casting spells, and half all their current spells. It seemed similar to the white magic that she normally used, for the most part, except for differences in the types of words that she had to say for the spell to work, and some, far slighter differences about the types of ingredients used.

Katrina had most of the ingredients already, and they were relatively commonplace – all sorts of herbs were used in white magic, even those such as Belladonna, despite what everyone said, and blood was always necessary, for that was the source of all magic, wasn't it? – except for one. For one, extremely important ingredient in the spell was a cardinal's head. And Katrina felt sick as she looked at the cardinal still sitting on the branch outside her window, chirping contentedly.

But she would do anything to protect Ichabod. The life of some small bird and the sacrifice of her purity was nothing for that.

_Ichabod_

That day, he felt better than he had in months. The lingering sickness seemed to have dissipated as though it had never existed, but even better than that, he felt like himself for the first time in so long. He was curious again, and cared about the world around him, about the men and women he passed in the streets, about Masbath's work.

And, of course, about Katrina. From the moment he saw her when he got home, he was filled with an overwhelming love and desire for her, the kind that had scared him when he had first met her. He couldn't resist leaning in and kissing her, and tangling his hand in her light hair as he did so. Quickly, they ended up in their bed, freeing one another from their clothing as quickly as possible. She was so _beautiful,_ and he knew that he was powerless to resist her. In the heat of passion, he didn't care.

It was only afterwards, when Katrina's cheeks were flushed and her body was only barely covered by a blanket, that he saw the headless cardinal on the table in the corner of the room, and the silver knife beside it. From that, his eyes were led to an open book on the same table, a book covered in black leather, one which he remembered far too well. From that he noticed the not-yet healed cut on Katrina's hand.

She looked like her stepmother lying there, and he was all too vividly reminded of an evening in a clearing, Katrina's stepmother lying there, her cheeks as flushed as Katrina's were then, the smell of blood from her hand…

Ichabod couldn't bear the implications. Neither could he bear the laughter that came from Katrina's mouth, halfway between his dear wife's own delighted laughter and her stepmother's cold cackle. He pulled his clothing on quickly and ran out of the house, not caring to look where he was going. He just kept running, getting as far away from the sound of that laughter as he could, though he could never escape the sound of it inside his own head.

He was running so wildly that his foot caught on something – he never saw what – and he tripped, plunging over into the Hudson River. The icy water closed over his head. Katrina had failed to protect him.


End file.
